On Warp and Woof

threads running
vertically, dancing back
and forth
with each clack
of the loom’s handle
threads running
horizontally with each
soft shirr of the shuttles—

nothing worthwhile is built
without the union of opposites,
nothing holds together
without the strength of opposition,
nothing coheres
unless we come together,
balanced and one.

***

Aurochs

Ūrohso, urus, aur, and ur—hunted with bone and flint-tipped arrows,
crossbred into domesticated cattle by chalcolithic herders, not once
but several times. Alive even in Roman times, brought to the arena to be
fought as a mark of honor surviving, hanging on, at the very edge.

The last cow died in a marshy Polish forest in 1627, last of the megafauna
and yet through genetic study, through careful crossbreeding matching gene
to gene to gene, the project of a lifetime we might yet see them thundering
across the fields of Europe, a little piece of our ancient past, a mistake made,
but perhaps returned under the shadow of skyscrapers—come back and teach
us what it means to be wild.

Photo by Nickolas Nikolic on Unsplash